People don’t know hunger

2020.11.13, by Akihiko

You know what they don’t tell you about starvation (or fasting, I guess)? And I mean having your stomach empty for a long period of time regularly, not just being hungry. The feeling of having anything in your stomach that isn’t a liquid, of being full… Of there being something in your guts becomes a foreign feeling. You almost forget what that’s like, being fed. You have a good several meals for a couple of days and you think, “What… What’s in my guts? What’s wrong with my intestines? Oh, that’s—that’s food. That’s food? That’s food. Wow.” When it’s been so long since you’ve eaten that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to take a shit. So I’ve got no sympathy at all for people who don’t fucking know how to grocery shop.

“Food is so expensive”—I’m sorry, is that a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese? That’s what, maybe 7 ounces of shitty food? You know you could’ve bought well over a pound of pasta for the same amount of money you spent on shitty macaroni and cheese? Yeah I know, recommending thrift to the poor, but dayum you live on Kraft-anything you’re already living like a badly fed animal. Show your guts some self-respect and buy yourself a pound of sweet potatoes. You make Kraft mac and cheese with butter that you buy separately anyway, I guarantee you serving melted butter on some freshly baked sweet potatoes is a lot better and more filling.

The ED’s full of troubled girls tonight.

A 13-year-old who could kick Tolly’s ass (she’s massive—both ways) whose mom scratched her up, they apparntly fight all the time and PD was called. Sweet kid. She cried when her asshole nurse told her that her family wouldn’t be allowed to come visit her in a psych facility. (You don’t know that. You don’t know their visitor policies. And the way you said it to the kid made it sound like she couldn’t have anyone here—and she can, she’s a minor.)

The other is a 14-year-old whose mom blames her for taking her meds (mom’s the fuckin’ problem—the kid is fine, drug screen is negative, mom is cold and spacey and just not there) and if anything the kid is more with it than mom. Crisis sent them over here (The fuck? She’s got no history of behavioral or mental issues and doesn’t admit to feeling like hurting anyone or herself right now, or ever, WHY DID YOU SEND HER HERE) and then refused to explain things to the mom so she could calm the girl down! (She started crying after she agreed to voluntarily move to a psych facility—which lets Crisis off the hook from actually having to evaluate her..) “We already talked to the doctor. Just give her some Ativan.” What a cold bitch. The kid was fine until basically Crisis and Mom started pressuring her to go to a psych place when her drug screening’s negative and god, you know what she [mom] was doing the whole time? Playing with her fuckin’ car keys as her kid asked her for reassurance. Like totally ignored the girl. The fuck?

I don’t think people should have kids unless they’re Ansel. God…

Some other teens here and none of the psych facilities have any beds available. Kaiser’s full up, too… All of their COVID beds are packed, they’ve got nowhere to put their own patients. (Or maybe they just don’t want to deal with them. Cost of PPE and such. Wasn’t there a big…? The [Kaiser] nurses somewhere struck over the lack of PPE Kaiser was enfor—I remember! They were firing nurses for wearing masks outside of patient rooms because it made for bad PR, this was [at] the beginning of the pandemic.) So even though this guy’s actually stable for transfer we’re admitting him here, because, Kaiser has no beds (or is it nurses, huh? or fucks) available.

Upper management’s texting me while I’m asleep to see if I can do OT coming in four hours early after firing a bunch of people when we were already understaffed pre-flu season and pre-COVID. My super, super, supervisor, the honcho’s who’s above my two other honchos. That’s uh, three levels up the chain of command? I wanna ask Ansel later, but he’s been busy having fun with… Even with all this happening, those two lovebirds still find a way to spend time with each other. I’d say I’m jealous, but Ant’s my gal, too… I feel embarrassed saying that… And Ansel… When she flusters him, he gets all stiff, and formal. It’s hard to fluster him, you have to flatter him a certain way. Then he gets all stiff because he doesn’t like attention being drawn to himself. Really? That guy? He’s so flashy when it comes to other things, but the moment you say, “I like you, you make me happy” he just… It’s kinda cute.

He made friends with a girl yesterday. A “maiden”—that’s what I’m gonna call her, because that’s what she is. (Not [just] because she’s a maid.) Iseul calls her a “target” because of course Ansel would melt over a girl like that. Super sweet and young and helpful and bright and flat-chested. And uh, not devious at all. Not like Ant and Anatolij. Isn’t that guy lucky? He’s surrounded by all sorts of people who are his type, and return his feelings. And now a maid(en)! I remember when Ant was called the “sweetest girl in the department”, oh boy—actually—even the cops that time, when she started working here, treated her like a kid… “Do you want a hoverboard for Christmas?”And nurses were stroking her hair accessories, things like that. I mean, I know she’s cute. She’s real cute. But like. You guys know she’s an adult?! But that’s all over now, because now she has abs and shoulder muscles and thick muscular thighs that could kill a man. She looks like a fit kid, not a fragile one. Sporty dark-skinned childhood friend with big bright Asian doe eyes (not the squinty kind) and the way she and Anatolij do their eyebrows…

Right, Ansel’s girl! The new girl. The maid. Uh…

She’s cute. Simple. I like her. She’s fine, I guess. I’unno, I prefer girls with more fire, not girls who Ansel could legitimately father if it weren’t for the age difference. Not that that stopped him from fathering over his ex-wife. Older than him and man was treating her like a little girl… Well… She used to be nice. Maybe… Whatever. Not that she’s [the maid] absolutely helpless, or anything. But ingénue… That’s really Ansel’s type.

I might sound like I’m complaining but I’m really glad he’s making friends with individuals we know are legit. No more ex-wifey shit. Oh my god. And of course he’d crush on someone like her since we haven’t been to the panaderia in so long… Ant likes their cheesecake but he really likes to go there for the daughter at the cash register. Personally, I think she’s too skinny… Four of her couldn’t overpower Ant…

I gotta say though, this girl he’s goin’ for is really high-taste. She’s got the perfect eyeshadow, muted lime to complement her amber eyes, and she wears her hair in a cute bun with white flowers, and her reddish white stud earrings are really cute, and her lip gloss is subtle, everything’s just perfect. I know Tolly’s gonna dote over her. Surprised he hasn’t yet, but when they run into each other, and they will, and he has the time, man. They’re gonna talk about eyebrows and then “What kind of books do you like? Oh, let me recommend you this!” And “I have a copy, here, do tell me what you think of this after you’re done,” and… It’s probably not the best time, but he’d probably love to invite her for tea… He does that, you know? He invites people for tea. Literal tea. And spoon sweets, and baked goods. Last Christmas he gave some of the security guards cheese. He’s that kind of…

Everything’s going so crazy. Trump’s packed the Pentagon with Islamophobic fascist loyalists. I worry about Tolly. How’s he handling all this? On the surface he seems fine, but. Work is really wearing down on him. This place isn’t good at all. We have clinical staff who cheer cops for shooting fleeing unarmed men in the back and we still have stupid bastards who think COVID-19 isn’t any worse than the flu (a dozen of John’s neighbors are dead because of that! Tell that to fucking John and their families! And North Dakota’s a fucking wreck, and Italy’s a disaster zone, again—) and he doesn’t have the energy—or frankly the personal security—to argue against that. Which side of the barricades are these guys gonna stand on? They didn’t have a warrant to take her [Ant’s] damn phone, she wasn’t even the person they were called for, but they still took it anyway, the damn pricks, and what for? She’s done nothing. Tolly’s still mad about that. Course he is! I am too.

Thinking about these guys makes me wanna smoke again. And I don’t wanna do that.

Giovanni… Where are you? If you were here, you’d fix everything, but I know that’s not true, everything would still be just as fucked up as it is… But at least we’d have you. I want someone to fight for us… No one’s got our back in this town. I look at “Taishou” [the maid], and think—what kind of world is this for you? No wonder Ansel’s goin’ crazy over protecting you. You’re still innocent, you’re still intact, but for how long? Something’s going to come and kill that girl, I just know it. All the good ones die and we’re left to go on in their place, picking up after their shadows… She’s not gonna be innocent for long. I don’t wanna tell Ansel that. She’ll end up like Tolly—jaded, cold, devious, mistrustful. That’s just the kind of world this is.

One of these days this world is gonna die and it won’t make people like Tolly anymore, it won’t twist them and try to wring the simple goodness out of all of them and there’ll just be a million Ants and Taishous and happy Tollies and Giovannis. That’s what I want. And Ansel can dad over all of them…

Giovanni. Right. Of all the things that could take you away—man, you could’ve been a saint. A martyr or something. Back when people actually venerated saints and holy men and such. But the people wouldn’t know, how you laughed harder than anyone else, they won’t know that you fought harder than anyone else, for fun, because you liked fighting, it was just a big game to you, you were just a big dog. They won’t know your laugh. They won’t know your favorite drink…

Why’d the world have to be so cruel to you? Of course Tolly’s so jaded…